The new General Secretary of the UN does nothing to stop the wars that are destroying Libya, Syria, Yemen or those threatening to erupt in Qatar, in Lebanon or against Iran or North Korea. He is doing nothing to stop the war against life by Donald Trump and the multinationals behind him. He does nothing about the many other explosive problems the planet is facing.

A large part of his activity is devoted to another goal: to destroying the Republic of Cyprus, in order to facilitate, among other goals, the new great war looming in the Middle East! This is the whole aim of the sinister operation named “solution of the Cyprus problem”.

Behind all the recent efforts to “solve the conflict in Cyprus” (which means in reality destroying the Cypriot state and its population, transforming a second member of the EU into a kind of postmodern protectorate, ready to explode at any moment), there is the same goal as the one to be found behind last year’s failed coup, supported by US neocons, in Turkey; behind the effort to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn by forcing an early election in Britain; behind the close, very “cosy” relations developed between Netanyahu’s Israel and the western Far Right (both Trump and Le Pen), in an effort to reshape Western “antiglobalisation” sentiments” into a huge anti-Muslim political force, preparatory to launching a war in the Middle East much greater than those of the past.

Coups d’état, wars, dictatorships, regime changes are not something very original in the history of southern Europe and the Mediterranean countries. What is original about the Cyprus coup (disguised as an effort to “solve the conflict in Cyprus”) is the attempt totally to destroy the state in Cyprus, not just control its orientation or politics, and thus bring about the destruction of its population. Given the enormous strategic importance of this otherwise small country, such an outcome, if achieved, will be one of the biggest victories of Western imperialism and Western neo-totalitarian forces since the eruption of the “Eastern Question” two and a half centuries ago.

What makes “a solution to the Cyprus conflict” so urgent is that full control of both Cyprus and Turkey is absolutely necessary for the task of encircling and neutralizing the Russian forces in Syria. And for Western imperialism in general and neocons in particular there is no more urgent need than encircling and neutralizing Russian forces in Syria. Besides, the independence of Cyprus (and of Greece for that matter) was never fully accepted by Washington, London and its allies. As for US bases in Crete and British bases in Cyprus, they are considered the most important in a region stretching from Norfolk, Virginia to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean! It seems rather clear that a hidden geopolitical agenda lurks behind both the Greek bail-out and the Cypriot bail-in programs.

For 25 years, since the first Gulf War was permitted by Gorbachev’s Kremlin in 1991, the USA, Israel, Great Britain and their allies have been making the law in the wider “Middle Eastern” region as a whole: they destroyed the most important Arab countries and they have been dominating the whole region in a way unprecedented in history. But since 2015 and the Russian intervention in Syria, which was also probably a response to Western aggression in Ukraine, the situation has been simply unacceptable for Western imperialism, for Israel and for the neocons. If the Russian presence in the centre of the wider Middle East region is stabilized, the West will face a strategic defeat more significant than the one it suffered in Vietnam. And it will become much more difficult, if not impossible, to wage war against Iran.

Cyprus is a small country, but one of enormous strategic importance for all of the Eastern Mediterranean. From an island one can attack whomever one wants, whereas to be attacked is difficult. This is one of the secrets underlying the domination of the world first by Great Britain and then by the United States. From Cyprus one can control the Suez Canal, Gaza, Israel, Lebanon, the Syrian and the Turkish coasts, including the port of Ceyhan, and also Greece, given the fact that no Greek government can remain indifferent to the fate of Greek Cypriots. It is enough to spend three minutes looking a map of the Eastern Mediterranean to understand why Cyprus is the real strategic centre of the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Eastern Mediterranean in its turn regulates access of Russia to warm water seas (and vice versa, the possibility of encircling and attacking Russia), but also access of Western Europe, of France and Germany to the Middle East and of Israel to Europe.

“Whoever controls Gibraltar, Malta, Crete and Cyprus rules the world,” Kissinger is said to have declared. Another country on which Mr. Kissinger has always placed much emphasis since his first and quite controversial book on nuclear strategy, is Libya. We know what happened to that country after the decision of Sarkozy, at the behest of Bernard Henri-Levy and on behalf of neocons, (who faced difficulties in Washington in the aftermath of the Iraq war), to use mainly France and Britain for the operation of attacking it. The pretence then was that Sarkozy wanted to save its population, and nowadays slaves are freely sold in the country’s markets. In 2011 in the Security Council Medvedev’s Russia and the Chinese leadership did not block the plans for the attack against Libya. By retreating all they achieved was to bring upon themselves even more difficult problems in Ukraine, Syria or Korea! It will be interesting to watch what position Moscow, Paris and Beijing will now adopt on Cyprus in the Security Council.

Mr. Guterres has no bombers to send against Cyprus. The world’s top diplomat is using other means. He convened an international conference in Switzerland whose sole aim has been take the island’s sovereignty away from its inhabitants, overriding the consideration that it happens to be a member of the EU and the Eurozone! This Conference is open-ended, like the Holy Inquisition – every time it convenes it is removing a part of Cypriot sovereignty, and it never ends. It will end only when the defendant, the Cypriot people, agrees to lose its state and commit suicide, like Mr. K. in Kafkas’s Trial.

At this Conference two countries are represented that in the past have waged bloody wars against Cyprus: Britain and Turkey. Greece is represented, but the Republic of Cyprus itself is not – only the two biggest communities of the island.

What do they discuss there? The Constitution of the Cypriot state and its international status: whether it will be an independent state or whether other powers will have some rights over it! Yes. Unbelievable as it may seem, it is not a Constitutional Assembly elected by the citizens but an international conference deliberating in secret in Switzerland that is deciding the Constitution of the future Cyprus, and also what rights Britain and Turkey will have on the island!!! No citizen of Cyprus knows exactly what is being debated in Geneva, what the proposals of the participants, or of Mr. Guterres, are!!!

What we are witnessing is the return of Europe to the situation predominating in the continent during the Holy Alliance! An international Conference is being held to decide the fate of a small nation.

From leaks to the press and the declarations of the Greek Foreign Minister to the German DPA news Agency (January 2017) we know the general outlines of what is being discussed

– The majority of the population (Greeks, 82%) is to be put on an equal footing with the minority (Turks, 18%) making it necessary for foreign dignitaries to be introduced to rule the state, most probably representing the interests of the USA, Britain, Israel and the empire of Finance (they will probably accept some role for the Security Council, to permit the Russians and Chinese to swallow their own defeat, as they did with Libya in 2011)

– The new Cyprus will be disarmed. It will not have the right to self-defence, like all other normal states in the world. Its armed forces will be dissolved

– The island will be put under the supervision of an “International Police Force”.

Just in passing, given the influence that Ankara has over Turkish Cypriots, such a scheme will be tantamount to providing Ankara (and also Washington, London and Tel Aviv) with influence and a veto on the Cypriot vote in the EU. It will also clearly mean the transformation of a second member of the EU, after Greece, into a post-modern protectorate. In practical terms it is not going to work and it will most probably lead to new bloody conflicts in Cyprus, as in the past.

All this became possible because the policy of the European Union in the Mediterranean is decided by Britain, the USA and Israel and also because of the policy of the SYRIZA party in Greece, which, in order to stay in power has accepted the role of organizer of Greek national and social suicide, transforming itself from a party of the “radical left” into a party of “radical neoliberalism”, surrendering all Greek foreign and defence policy to the USA, Great Britain and Israel.

Greece and Cyprus now provide us with an extreme – but not unique – indication of where we are heading in all of Europe in terms of national sovereignty and democracy. The decision made in Berlin to hand the economic “governance” of the continent over to the empire of Finance, the IMF and Goldman Sachs is now beginning to yield its first major political and geopolitical fruits.

As for Mr. Guterres, there is nothing strange about a European “Socialist” playing such a role. From the time the leaders of the German SPD sided with the Kaiser in the First World War through the time that the French “Socialists” supported the campaigns against Libya, Mali and Assad, there is not any serious imperialist crime which did not find enthusiastic support from European “Social Democracy”.

Dimitris Konstantakopoulos is a journalist and writer, former Secretary of the Independent Citizens Movement, former member SYRIZA’s Central Committee, current editorial board member of the international magazine Utopia Review, ex-chief of the Greek Press Agency office in Moscow, formerly served as Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou’s adviser in East-West relations and arms control.